Pod Insights Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz The Benefits of Lowering Stress, Sugar, Alcohol & Coffee with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee About this episode Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a big believer in weight loss plans tailored just for you, knowing just how much modern life impacts our health. He suggests listening to what your own body needs; even though some trendy diets, like an all-meat approach, might work for some people, Dr. Chatterjee always points back to the basics: handling stress, getting enough sleep, eating mindfully, and staying away from sugar and alcohol.
To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep297
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a British physician, author, television presenter and podcaster. He is best known for his TV show Doctor in the House and for being the resident doctor on BBC Breakfast and as a regular contributor to BBC Radio.
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Transcript 16,766 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Mindy Pelz? On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I bring you Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Now, I hope you all are familiar with Dr. Chatterjee, but if you're not, you need to meet this man. So, he has an incredible podcast called Feel Better Live More. And he actually brought me on his podcast in February, when Fast Like a Girl was launched into the world, and we had one of the best discussions about hormones that I've had with anybody who's interviewed me. And so, I was recently in England, where he is based, and met with him in person to do this podcast. And what I wanted him specifically to talk about was
0:44 Mindy Pelz? some real hacks for unsticking weight, because I know so many of you are struggling with getting that weight loss journey going. And Dr. Chatterjee not only has authored five books on lifestyle, all of which include tips for weight loss, but he has really, really looked at obesity from a unique angle. So, in this podcast, we're going to talk about sleep, we're going to talk about timing of food, we're going to talk about stress, there's so many things we unpack in probably the most thoughtful conversation I have had to date on helping you all unstick your weight. So, I can't, you know, I can't say enough
1:29 Mindy Pelz? about how much I love this man, and what an incredible, incredible conversation this was. So, Dr. Chatterjee, as always, I hope you enjoy this, and it moves the needle on putting your health at the forefront of your life. Enjoy.
1:46 Mindy Pelz? Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to season four of the Resetter Podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy.
2:15 Mindy Pelz? Okay, Rangan, does it feel weird, by the way, to be sitting here in your studio being interviewed?
2:20 Speaker 01 It does.
2:21 Mindy Pelz? I bet.
2:22 Speaker 01 It does. I'm not used to being asked questions.
2:24 Mindy Pelz? Right. I'm wondering that. Are you going to be able to like let go of the interviewer?
2:28 Speaker 01 I will try not to ask you any questions. Yeah, I will try my best.
2:32 Mindy Pelz? Excellent, excellent. So here's what I want to start with. I always think about my audience and I think about what they're struggling with. And weight loss just comes up over and over and over again. People just can't seem to get over all the hurdles of weight loss. So I want to start with one question. Why can't people lose weight? Why are we struggling with weight loss?
2:55 Speaker 01 There's many ways to answer that, Mindy. But the first way I'd like to answer that is by saying the reason we're struggling to lose weight is because we're not addressing the root cause of our weight gain. We think it's simple. We think it's just a case of eating less food and moving more. The problem is, for many people, that approach has proved really, really problematic. People are trying their best. And I think the first thing we have to really acknowledge is that it's okay that we put on weight in this environment.
3:29 Mindy Pelz? That's so well said.
3:30 Speaker 01 If we brought our great grandparents to the modern food environment, you know, 60, 70% of them would also be struggling with their weight.
3:38 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
3:39 Speaker 01 It's not easy.
3:40 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
3:40 Speaker 01 And then we also have to acknowledge that as humans, one of our superpowers is our ability to store excess energy. So we can put on that fat for when we can't get food, for when winter comes. The problem is, winter never comes.
3:57 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
3:58 Speaker 01 And I think it's almost always possible to help someone lose weight in a sustainable and responsible way, once you find the right approach for that.
4:09 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
4:09 Speaker 01 So I think one of the big problems is that we see what our friend has done, or our work colleague, and we go, right, that's how you lose weight. And we tried that approach, and we realized, oh, wait a minute, it works for her, but it doesn't work for me. And that's because there are multiple different things that can be at play.
4:29 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
4:29 Speaker 01 I'll give an example. Sleep. Like a lot of people, when they think about weight loss, they think about food. And of course, food's important. We'll talk about food. But not enough people are thinking about sleep. We know that if you sleep, let's say, five, five and a half hours a night compared to seven and a half hours, on average, you will consume twenty two percent more calories the following day.
4:54 Mindy Pelz? Oh, wow.
4:54 Speaker 01 Right? So that means five days of sleep deprivation means you eat a whole extra day's worth of calories.
5:01 Mindy Pelz? That's crazy.
5:02 Speaker 01 Right?
5:02 Mindy Pelz? Does timing of sleep matter in that scenario?
5:05 Speaker 01 I I'm not familiar with research saying timing of sleep matters. The the point I often bring up with my patients is that sometimes you can lose weight by not even addressing your diet. I I've got so many patients who I helped them lose weight and I didn't touch their diet.
5:20 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
5:21 Speaker 01 I just helped them sleep better.
5:23 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
5:23 Speaker 01 Because we don't realise that, you know, we eat more the day after sleep deprivation. But not only that, we're not craving fruits and vegetables the day after we haven't slept. We're craving high calorie, sugar-rich foods. Our willpower is lower the day after we haven't slept. So not sleeping well makes every other change you're trying to make more difficult.
5:50 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
5:51 Speaker 01 So circling back to your original question, why are so many of us struggling to lose weight? It's because we're looking for cookie cutter approaches. We haven't empowered ourselves to find the right approach for us.
6:04 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, I I'm so in alignment with that. And that leads me to the question of is weight gain an a food issue?
6:13 Speaker 01 Not always.
6:15 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, I mean, that alone is mind blowing. Okay, so what are the other issues?
6:22 Speaker 01 Well, sleep.
6:22 Mindy Pelz? Outside of sleep.
6:23 Speaker 01 Right, sleep's a big one. Stress. Okay, there was a study in America about ten years ago now, which showed on on average, eighty percent of people change their eating behaviour in response to stress. Now, from recollection, it was about forty five percent of people eat more.
6:44 Speaker 01 In response to stress, thirty five percent or so eat less. So let's think about that. We know we're living in very, very stressful times. Five years ago or so, the World Health Organisation put on their website that stress is the health epidemic of the twenty first century.
7:00 Mindy Pelz? Five years ago?
7:01 Speaker 01 That was five years ago.
7:02 Mindy Pelz? Pre-pandemic.
7:03 Speaker 01 Pre-pandemic, yeah, a long time ago. It's been there for a while. I think we all recognise that we're living in uniquely stressful times and that there's a whole variety of reasons for that. But what that study is showing us that almost half of us eat more in response to stress. So we can talk about food and of course, eating the right foods makes a big difference. But what I'm interested in, I think very much like you, Mindy, is trying to figure out what is the action that's going to help this person lose weight?
7:35 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
7:35 Speaker 01 Right? And for some people, it's the stress in their life.
7:39 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
7:39 Speaker 01 There's too much stress and they're using food as a way of dealing with the stress. So if we can help them in other ways, reduce the stress load in their lives, again, can be easier said than done sometimes.
7:52 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
7:52 Speaker 01 But if we can do that, well, often they'll naturally start to eat less.
7:56 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
7:57 Speaker 01 So stress is another factor. I think our timing of our food intake matters massively, right? A lot of the focus is on what we eat, but when we eat also matters massively. And for some people, it matters more than others.
8:12 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
8:12 Speaker 01 And I know you talk about this a lot on your channel, Mindy. We're all very, very different.
8:20 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
8:20 Speaker 01 Right? We've all got different microbiomes. We've got different childhood experiences. We have different environments, different cultural preferences. And so it's not going to be a one size fits all for everyone. And one of the big problems I see, Mindy, is that You see people attacking others online saying, no, that's not true. Right. This is the way you lose weight. But actually, if we can stand back from that, we can recognize that, wait a minute, that that's the approach for you.
8:49 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
8:49 Speaker 01 Great. You found the right approach for you. Wonderful.
8:51 Mindy Pelz? Right.
8:52 Speaker 01 That may not be the right approach for me or the right approach for someone else.
8:55 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
8:55 Speaker 01 So I'm really keen with my patients to help them figure out what's the right approach for them.
9:01 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
9:02 Speaker 01 But that's, sorry.
9:03 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, no, I was thinking on that, it's funny, I had this one day as I was studying all the research on fasting, that it just hit me like a ton of bricks, that if we continue down the path of debating what food style humans are supposed to eat, we are never making progress.
9:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, because humans are opportunistic omnivores, right? Our diets have always been dictated by our geography and our climates.
9:31 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
9:31 Speaker 01 Always.
9:32 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
9:33 Speaker 01 And it's only now that we're thinking that there's one perfect diet that we should all be following.
9:37 Mindy Pelz? That's right.
9:38 Speaker 01 It's simply not true. The diet for you is also going to depend on your age, you know, are you a bodybuilder, a young male bodybuilder, or are you a pregnant woman in your thirties?
9:49 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
9:50 Speaker 01 The right diet for you may well change throughout your life.
9:53 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
9:53 Speaker 01 You may have had a course of antibiotics that has had a negative impact on your microbiome. And suddenly the foods that you used to thrive on, you no longer thrive on. So there's a lot of nuance there. And the reason I'm so keen to really try and explain that nuance is because I think people are beating themselves up.
10:10 Mindy Pelz? Oh, for sure. And but but also, the when you hear what you just said, I think where the brain goes is, wow, well, then it's way too confusing.
10:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:21 Mindy Pelz? So how do we help unconfuse people?
10:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a really good point. The first point I want to get across is that it is almost always possible to lose weight.
10:31 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
10:32 Speaker 01 Right. So I want people to just let that sink in for a minute.
10:37 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
10:37 Speaker 01 And if someone's listening or watching this and they think, well, I've tried everything for 10 years. My hunch would be that you haven't tried everything yet. You've tried your best.
10:47 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
10:48 Speaker 01 But let's see if maybe through this conversation or other conversations that they hear, they can find something that they haven't quite. It hasn't quite landed before where they think, oh, wait a minute, maybe there's something else. So let's talk about timing of food for a minute. And I don't think timing of food matters for absolutely everyone. But for some people, changing the timing of their food intake is transformative. So what do I mean by that? I mean, there's been a lot of research for a number of years now. I think it kind of started with Professor Sachin Panda at the Solk Institute about time restricted eating. This idea that we eat all the food that we're going to eat within a fixed window.
11:26 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
11:27 Speaker 01 And you know, the truth is initially, a lot of those studies were done on mice.
11:30 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
11:30 Speaker 01 And people would say, okay, but how does that replicate to humans? Now, I know he's trying to do that now, and there are some good studies in humans. But let me talk about my clinical experience because ever since I read his early trials, I started implementing 10 hour and 12 hour eating windows with my patients. Because I thought, okay, we haven't got it in humans yet, but it kind of makes sense on an evolutionary basis.
11:56 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
11:57 Speaker 01 The science is quite compelling, even though it's done on mice yet. So let's wait and see what happens with humans. But also the question I'm always asking myself as a clinician is, how dangerous is this intervention? Right? What's the downside here?
12:12 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
12:13 Speaker 01 And you know, for most people, there's no downside. So Sachin Panda's research has shown that in America, I think over 50% of adults are consuming food in any given 24 hours in a 15 hour window.
12:29 Mindy Pelz? That's crazy.
12:30 Speaker 01 Right? One five.
12:30 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, and we eat like 70 times, like you put 70, I saw a study that was like some over 70 times in that 15 hours, you're putting something in your mouth.
12:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you know, and honestly, I believe that 50 years ago or so, no one was doing that. It's quite a modern phenomenon where often, let's say, we're waking up early for work at 6am and some people will consume food straight away or have a coffee that actually is like a dessert because of how much is in there, right? And the sugar and the cream and all the other things and the flavorings. And they're still consuming at 10:30pm on the sofa in front of the television.
13:08 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
13:09 Speaker 01 So the point I'm trying to make here is very simply. We're not designed to have food in our system the entire day.
13:16 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
13:16 Speaker 01 Right. So his research, Professor Panda's research has shown that if you just eat all the food you're going to consume within a 12 hours, you can get all kinds of potential benefits. Now, potential doesn't mean everyone's going to get them. But for many people, you are. Weight loss, better blood sugar control, better hormonal balance, you know, better digestion, better sleep. The amount of women I've seen in clinic who had really bad IBS, irritable bowel syndrome symptoms. And they they really struggled for years with medication and trying to change their diet. Sometimes when they compress their food into a 12 hour eating window or a 10 hour eating window.
13:58 Speaker 01 Because you're starting to work in harmony with your body, right? And you're giving your digestive system a break. Often those symptoms go away or are vastly reduced.
14:08 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
14:08 Speaker 01 And I have so many patients, Mindy, over the years, who literally, the way I helped them to lose weight. Was to say, okay, I'm going to eat all of my food within a 12 hour eating window or a 10 hour eating window. And I honestly believe that for most humans, that is very, very achievable.
14:25 Mindy Pelz? Yes, agreed, agreed. It's interesting you say that because, you know, in my clinic, I, once I caught on to this time restricted fasting idea, literally I stopped like prescribing supplements for for gastrointestinal situations. Like my supplement cells went way down, which is beautiful because people were actually healing themselves through this time restricted eating that you're talking about.
14:52 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think people often ask, well, what, you know, what am I meant to do? Do I do I skip my dinner? Do I bring that earlier? Do I do I delay my breakfast? And again, what I would say is it kind of depends, right? Because it's easy for me to give advice without knowing that individual's life.
15:10 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
15:10 Speaker 01 And their lifestyle and, you know, what are the demands on them? When do their kids like to eat? What time do they need to go to work? So to make it really simple, I say, listen, if you've never tried a form of time restricted eating. I would say, give it a go, right? Try 12 hours. Can you eat all the food you're going to eat within 12 hours? If you can do that and you can have a 12 hour gap in every 24 hours, and hopefully you're sleeping for seven or eight hours of those 12 hours, maybe experiment with bringing it back to 10 hours and you have a 14 hour gap. And see, is this working for me? If it is, great. If it isn't, okay, there's other tools in the weight loss toolkit we can talk about.
15:49 Mindy Pelz? That's right.
15:49 Speaker 01 And I, but I would always say, give that a go.
15:53 Mindy Pelz? Are those your first two tools you would pull out?
15:56 Speaker 01 Again, I can't really say what's the first tool because I assess every patient individually. So I will be looking at what they eat, why they eat, how they eat and when they eat. Right, I'm always looking at that. When I think about food, I'm thinking about all those things. Why We Eat was the second chapter in my book on weight loss. And I was really passionate about this chapter because I think people often feel bad, Mindy, because they buy a new diet book and they go, okay, you know what? That diet book didn't work. Maybe this new diet book's going to work.
16:31 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
16:31 Speaker 01 And it might do, right? Sure, sometimes it does work. You just weren't on the right eating program for you. But sometimes it's not what you're eating. Most people, in my experience, who were trying to lose excess weight, and really excess body fat is what we're talking about, they kind of know the basics, right? The issue for some people isn't what we're eating, it's why we're eating. What do I mean by that? I mean, I mentioned stress already, how stress drives many of us to eat more or eat less for sure. But let's take a scenario that I've seen so often with patients that at 9pm,
17:13 Speaker 01 they've eaten all that they want to eat, they're trying to be good, and they're on their sofa watching television and they suddenly get this craving. Ah, yeah, I really want some ice cream. I want some sugar. I want some sweets. And.
17:30 Speaker 01 I realise it's not about knowledge that, right? It's not about information. They know already that ice cream at nine P M. In front of the sofa is probably not going to be helping them. The question isn't what they're eating, it's why are they eating it? So I created this little exercise that I call the freedom exercise or the three Fs. Feel, feed and find. These are those three Fs. And so what I have people do, and anyone listening to this can use this exercise to help them with a sugar craving, an ice cream craving. They can also do it with a social media craving or a alcohol craving, right? Is, let's say you're sitting on the sofa and you have that urge to have ice cream. Okay, just take a quick pause and go to the first F.
18:16 Speaker 01 What is it I'm really feeling here? Am I hungry? You know, is it physical hunger or is it emotional hunger? Am I lonely? Have I had a row with my partner? Has the kids bedtime taken too long? And I'm just trying to get something for me and I go ahead and have it. This is not about beating people up. It's about saying, I want to help you become more aware. So the first time they do it, it's like, oh, I'm actually just feeling really stressed at the moment because of my life. That's why I'm turning to ice cream. Okay, great. Next time it happens, do the first F again, but then go to the second F.
18:53 Mindy Pelz? Let me, can I say one thing on that? Because my, now my hormonal lens kicks in and I think really what you want is dopamine.
19:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
19:03 Mindy Pelz? So, but there's a lot of ways to get dopamine. So if you're sitting on the couch and you're like, oh, my gosh, I, I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. Life has been stressful today. You're searching for a neurochemical is what you're searching for.
19:17 Speaker 01 Exactly.
19:18 Mindy Pelz? So you, you only know it in food, but you can get it in other things.
19:22 Speaker 01 And that's where the second F comes in. The second F is, is feed. Okay, so the first one is feel, what am I feeling? The second F is feed. Okay, now that I know I'm stressed and wasn't really hungry. It's like, how does ice cream feed that emotion? Oh, ice cream helps me feel less stressed. Okay, that's why I'm going to, okay, fine. Then if you want to have it, go ahead and have it. But then you want to really get to that third F, which is find. Okay, so the first one is feel. So I know that I'm feeling stressed. Ice cream or chocolate helps me feel less stressed. Now can I find, that's the third F, can I find an alternative behaviour?
20:03 Mindy Pelz? I love that.
20:04 Speaker 01 That's going to feed the feeling. And that's exactly what you're talking about. So that could be, I'm lonely, instead of sugar, I could have a chat with my partner.
20:14 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
20:14 Speaker 01 Or I could phone one of my friends. I'm feeling as though I've not had any time to myself. I've just been on Zoom calls all day. Okay, instead of having the ice cream, you could run yourself a bath. Right?
20:25 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
20:25 Speaker 01 You know, it could be that you just need to change your environment. The brain is a very associative organ. So if someone struggled with their weight for many years and they're used to snacking on the sofa in front of the television, it can be quite hard to break that cycle. Maybe if you have the room in your house or your apartment, you go to a different room and then suddenly you don't feel like having it, or maybe you're just thirsty.
20:48 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
20:49 Speaker 01 And you have a glass of sparkling water.
20:51 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
20:51 Speaker 01 And that craving's gone. The point I'm trying to make with this why we eat section is, I really strongly feel that this is one of the big missing pieces in weight loss. It's all about what, what should we do? But I don't think there's many people out there, Mindy, who don't know when they're trying to lose weight, that too much sugar's not helping them.
21:12 Mindy Pelz? Right.
21:12 Speaker 01 They kind of know that.
21:13 Mindy Pelz? Right, they just can't get over it.
21:14 Speaker 01 They can't get over it.
21:15 Mindy Pelz? So something really interesting, I sort of do that with exercise when I don't feel like exercising. I have like certain steps that I do and one of the steps is put your workout clothes on.
21:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:27 Mindy Pelz? Because once I put my work, and I can, I can literally go to a place where I'm like, I'm not working out. But I know I need to work out, I'm not working out. Okay, put your workout clothes on and then make a decision. And then I go and put my workout clothes on and then I'm like, I don't know, I kind of feel like I might want to work out. And then if I, if I'm still hesitant, I'll go, actually, if I go for a run, I'll say, just go for a walk.
21:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:50 Mindy Pelz? And I just chunk it down into little steps. And before you know it, you're off doing the proper health habit.
21:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. And again, this goes back to a personalised approach, right? All we can do, in my view, on these sort of mediums like a podcast, is share possible tools.
22:06 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
22:07 Speaker 01 But people have to understand. That not every tool is for everyone.
22:11 Mindy Pelz? Right.
22:12 Speaker 01 Right. And I need to find which tool there is the right tool for me.
22:17 Mindy Pelz? That's right. Yeah.
22:18 Speaker 01 You know, so, so that's how I think about weight loss, or frankly, any medical problem. I'm trying to look at someone's life and go, what are the inputs here? And my, my very first book a few years ago was on the four pillars of health. And the American was called How to Make Disease Disappear. And really, I think that framework I outlined in that book still applies. You know, the book was six or seven years old now, still applies today, which is there's four pillars of health, which have the huge impacts on how you feel, your weight, your mood. But they're also four pillars that we have a pretty high degree of control over. It's food, movement, sleep and stress. So you can look at those four pillars and put them through the lens of weight loss and go, okay,
23:03 Speaker 01 just to make this really simple here, I'm trying to lose weight. I've struggled in the past, right? I feel like I've tried everything. Let's go around these four pillars in my own life and figure out which one needs addressing.
23:17 Mindy Pelz? I love that.
23:18 Speaker 01 You know, so we talked a little bit about stress.
23:20 Mindy Pelz? Right.
23:21 Speaker 01 Right. We could go deep into stress, but that's a little bit about stress. We talked a little bit about sleep and how sometimes, and there's a lot of case studies I put in my books, on women, patients of mine, who've lost weight just by getting their sleep dialed in.
23:35 Mindy Pelz? Oh yeah, I believe it. Sleep, you burn fat when you sleep and that is hard fact.
23:41 Speaker 01 You, you burn fat, you eat less the next day, your willpower's better. Right. There's all kinds of things. A lot of people know about hormones like leptin and ghrelin, the satiety hormone leptin and the hunger hormone ghrelin. Well, when you haven't slept, those get flipped the following day. We know that feeling when you haven't slept, I know this feeling, I've had this in the past, many times, you always feel hungry and you never feel full. That's because ghrelin and leptin have flipped.
24:08 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
24:09 Speaker 01 So. I acknowledge that some people find it hard to sleep, right? I acknowledge that some women in their 40s, you know, for a variety of reasons, maybe hormonal changes, maybe pressures in life, young children, elderly parents, a household that you're trying to run, I get it can be difficult, but I think it's really empowering sometimes to let a patient know, hey, listen, I can see that you've tried so many different things, but one thing I don't think you have tried is addressing your sleep. Why don't we ease up on the diet at the moment, right? Just relax a little bit there. What if in the next month, we start helping you focus on sleep?
24:46 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
24:46 Speaker 01 What are the small changes I can help you with here? And before you know it, if someone can sleep even 20 minutes more a night, like if you go from five hours, 40 minutes a night to six hours a night, sure, it's not seven hours, it's not seven and a half hours, but it's better than it was.
25:04 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, you're moving in the right direction.
25:06 Speaker 01 You're moving in the right direction, you have more energy, you're suddenly, you've got a bit more energy to cook for yourself.
25:10 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
25:10 Speaker 01 You're not quite as tempted when you go to the coffee shop in the morning to pick up that pastry, you think, no, no, I'm not going to have that. It's like a ripple effect.
25:19 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
25:19 Speaker 01 And so I love this four pillar approach because I think you can apply it to anything, depression, anxiety.
25:25 Mindy Pelz? Gives you control.
25:26 Speaker 01 Gives you control.
25:27 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
25:27 Speaker 01 And then I, the tip I often say to people is, look at those four pillars and ask yourself, which pillar do you need the most work in? Because I think a lot of us, we like to go to our favourite pillar.
25:40 Mindy Pelz? Oh, yeah, or the one's easiest.
25:42 Speaker 01 The one that's easiest.
25:42 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
25:43 Speaker 01 Right? And I understand that.
25:44 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
25:44 Speaker 01 And sure, you know, I've got nothing inherently against that, but I have found in over two decades now, I've seen tens of thousands of patients, that generally speaking, for most people, if we try and go to our weakest pillar and bring that up, actually, we make so much more impact on our health.
26:04 Mindy Pelz? Interesting.
26:04 Speaker 01 Because some people I've found have got a pretty good diet, right?
26:07 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
26:08 Speaker 01 Let's say it's a 90% good diet and they're stressing out over a little bit of sugar they have on a Sunday. And I'm like, yeah, but you know what? I think your diet's pretty good. I think it's much better for you to address the fact that you're only sleeping five hours a night and let that bit of sugar on a Sunday go. Just go, it's okay, but let's work on sleep. But often people want to neglect the sleep and go, how can I make my diet even better? How can I get it to ninety five percent?
26:36 Mindy Pelz? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you say that. So I have a new theory that I actually, it's been percolating in my mind. I haven't, I haven't bounced off anybody. So you're the perfect person to bounce it off. I think one thing we don't talk about enough in with food and weight loss is the environment in which you're putting yourself in when you eat. So I'll give you an example. A patient I've been working with recently has a history of eating disorders. And so we've been trying to bring back a little more of, you know, a love for food, to not have her fear food. And so she was telling me, oh, I've got family in town and I'm not able to follow the right macros and I can't, can't get my blood sugar right. And I said, this is what I want you to do. You're with family. You, I want you
27:20 Mindy Pelz? to sit with your family. I want you to eat good quality food. And I want you just to enjoy that experience without any negative thought going through because you, what's happening hormonally is oxytocin's going up. And when oxytocin goes up, cortisol goes down. And when cortisol goes down, you're more insulin sensitive. So now that food, that high carb food that you're eating right now, in the love and support of the family that you care about, is going to have a different impact on you hormonally than if you take that same meal and you sit at your countertop and you wolf it down while you're looking at Instagram.
27:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love that. And I think it's spot on. I remember a few years ago when I was writing my book on weight loss, I remember reading a study sharing that basically you can eat the same foods in a high stress state and you'll put on more weight from them than if you eat them in low stress.
28:18 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
28:18 Speaker 01 And again, let's think about this. Let's take a step back. How are we designed to eat? We're designed really to eat in a relaxed state.
28:29 Mindy Pelz? Yeah. With, with community.
28:31 Speaker 01 With community, with people around us, you know, let's say it was at the, at the end of the day, after a hunt, right? We're, we're, we're all relaxed, we're bonding, we're sharing the food that's been either caught at the hunt or has been gathered, the tubers, right? In that sort of relaxed state, and I think one of the problems these days is that we're so stressed, we're eating healthy food in a stressed out state. And I really think it has a negative impact on us, or we don't get as many of the benefits as we might have done. There was one study from, I think the University of Birmingham that was published a few years ago that showed that if you're eating, let's say you eat your lunch and you're distracted, right?
29:15 Speaker 01 So you're also doing emails at the same time whilst eating your healthy food. Because you're distracted at that meal, you eat more at every other meal for that day.
29:26 Mindy Pelz? That's crazy.
29:27 Speaker 01 It's really crazy, but it made me think the whole human body is interconnected.
29:31 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
29:31 Speaker 01 And I think far too often we're trying to separate out into, well, what's the right food for weight loss? What's the right exercise for weight loss? And I understand why people want to know these things. But we kind of have to understand that everything works together.
29:47 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
29:47 Speaker 01 If you eat in a more mindful state at lunchtime, if you can shut your computer and pay attention and not be in a rush, well, you're going to eat less for the rest of the day naturally, without you even trying. And I often think about the French paradox, Mindy, you know, this idea that why is it that in, in France supposedly that they have lower rates of heart disease? Given how much fat, given how much cheese, how much red wine they have.
30:17 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
30:18 Speaker 01 And there's a number of theories. My theory, I think, you know, the quality of the food they're eating absolutely plays a huge role because I think generally in France, there's still a very strong food culture about eating the right foods. Proper foods that we've grown our way and cooked.
30:35 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
30:35 Speaker 01 But I think it's also how they eat. So still to this day in France, there is very much a let's stop and eat culture for lunch. And I remember this because a few years ago. It was actually when my first book came out in France, I was being interviewed by a French journalist. I was like, can I ask you a question? Do you guys still have this culture where you stop for lunch and dinner? Like, you're not also working or doing emails? She goes, absolutely. In France, we still stop. Meal times are sacrosanct. You don't work at the same time. You sit at a table, it's properly prepared, you eat. She said to me, the only places where that's going now in France is in some of the international offices in Paris,
31:18 Speaker 01 where the, you know, the multinational companies have come in and people are now working through their lunch break. And then I think about these studies and I think, wow. If you're in France and you're eating in a relaxed state, you're not trying to do a million things at the same time. You're going to digest your food better.
31:37 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
31:37 Speaker 01 You're going to process your food better. You're going to stop eating probably when you're full, rather than cramming it in and going beyond full.
31:46 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
31:46 Speaker 01 And so this all circles back to your first question. Why do we struggle? Well, I think the reason we struggle is because we're only looking at one or two areas.
31:55 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
31:56 Speaker 01 When there's seven or eight, or even nine or 10 areas we could be looking at.
31:59 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
32:00 Speaker 01 It's not that every area is relevant for all of us. Someone may be listening to this, Mindy, and they've already watched your YouTube videos and gone to a whole food diet. Right? They may be eating already real food and practicing some of your fasting recommendations. And they may still be struggling. Well, maybe it's not food at this moment in time. Maybe they've addressed the food pillar really nicely. Maybe it's stress.
32:27 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
32:27 Speaker 01 Maybe it's sleep.
32:28 Mindy Pelz? Yep. Oh, we see this all the time because I would say, coming out of the gates, when people first study fasting, 80% of them apply it and they do really well. And then there's this 20% that are like, I'm doing everything and I believe them. They're like, I'm doing everything. I don't know why I'm not losing weight. And that's when you have to bring in these other factors. And I think that the challenge we have is that we've made food or weight loss really about calories in, calories out. Like you gotta move more, eat less kinda, kinda mentality. And that sticks us every single time. So one question you said, I really want to highlight this because this is one that I've been really deep in thinking about. And it, it, it plays out in the French example that you just gave.
33:12 Mindy Pelz? Where does alcohol fit into all of this? Because I'll tell you something really interesting. When I have a CGM on and I drink a glass of wine with my meal, I actually see less of a glucose spike. And I'm not saying that I should have a glass of wine with everything, but what I think it's doing is relaxing me. And so, and, and maybe I need to put myself in a more relaxed state before I do that without the glass of wine. But there is something that it does, and, and the French do this, right? Over a law, a, a long meal. They're having wine and bread and cheese.
33:50 Speaker 01 This, this is so interesting. I'm so passionate about this. It reminds me also of when I used to drink. Now, I don't really drink alcohol anymore. I don't think I've had an alcoholic drink for over four years now. And I didn't have a problem with it. It's not that I have any moral problem with people who, who choose to drink. It's just, I got to the stage in my life where I thought, I, I just don't need this anymore.
34:15 Mindy Pelz? It's not serving you.
34:15 Speaker 01 It's not serving me anymore. Like I, I don't like the way I feel, whether I don't like the impact it has on my sleep. But when I did use to drink, what was really interesting is I noticed if I had a glass of red wine, let's say.
34:30 Speaker 01 In the middle of my working week in the evening, you know, I wouldn't sleep particularly well, I'd have a headache the next morning, but the same glass on holiday, if I was on vacation with my family, it did nothing. I didn't feel anything. I slept really well. And I thought, well, that's really, really interesting. The state in which you're in when you consume something makes a difference. And of course, when I say it like that, it's quite intuitive and quite obvious.
34:55 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
34:55 Speaker 01 But I don't think we think about it. We think that one unit or two units of alcohol will have the same impact on us, no matter when or how we're having it. And I don't think that's the case. The other thing I think we need to really be thinking about is like,
35:10 Speaker 01 what is the stress load in our lives? So I was trying to explain, well, why is it, it gives me a hangover in my home life, but not when I'm on holiday? And I also think it might have to do with stress load. So in your home life, where you're working, you're managing the kids at the school clubs and, you know, you're, you're getting closer and closer to what I call your stress threshold, right? So maybe that glass of alcohol is tipping you over and you're feeling the effects. But let's say on holiday, you don't have emails to answer, you don't have your work to do, whatever it might be.
35:43 Mindy Pelz? Good point.
35:43 Speaker 01 You have a lot of headroom and resilience.
35:46 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
35:46 Speaker 01 So I think that's one thing we need to think about with alcohol, specifically around weight loss. Okay. Where does alcohol fit in? I don't think it's helpful for most people.
35:55 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
35:56 Speaker 01 Right?
35:56 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
35:57 Speaker 01 It is full of calories, you know, it helps put on liver fats, which is super not helpful for, for our overall health, our metabolic health.
36:06 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
36:07 Speaker 01 But I also understand that some people do like to consume alcohol. It's maybe a way that they wind down their day. Maybe it's something they do to connect them with other people. And so I'm always trying to give practical advice because there's Optima and then there's real life.
36:24 Mindy Pelz? Right.
36:25 Speaker 01 Right? And some people, they can hear things on alcohol, they go, but they're going to go, no, but I, that's how I finish off on a Friday in my week. I have a glass of beer or a glass of wine. So I want to be totally transparent. I don't think it's helpful for most people, but I also do recognize that if we look at some of these long living populations around the world, like the Blue Zones, for example, which is getting a lot of press at the moment because of the Netflix series, right? We have to also acknowledge that some of these long living populations do have a glass of red wine most evenings.
36:58 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, every night.
36:59 Speaker 01 And are seemingly able to tolerate it and they're still living to a hundred in in really good health. So what's going on there? Because we can say that there's no biological benefit to alcohol and I'd probably agree with that, right?
37:13 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
37:14 Speaker 01 But for some people, it's part of their culture. It's the way that they bond. And I think what happens in some of these blue zones is that they're getting everything else right, right? They're eating natural foods. It's local, it's seasonal. They're moving their bodies each day. They have a strong sense of community. They have low levels of stress. People aren't left isolated by themselves. You know, the whole community comes together. Elderly people are living in extended families. And so I think if you look at alcohol through the stress lens, I think it teaches us quite a lot. If your stress load is low, well, I'm not saying there's a benefit to drinking alcohol, but you might be able to tolerate it.
37:55 Mindy Pelz? Right, right.
37:56 Speaker 01 If your stress load is high, it may well be tipping you over. The other thing I think where alcohol becomes really problematic for weight loss is to do with its impact on sleep.
38:06 Mindy Pelz? Oh, yeah, for sure.
38:08 Speaker 01 We've all got our unique threshold, but for some people, even half a glass of red wine will tank your REM sleep, which is a very important phase of deep sleep. REM sleep is also called by a lot of sleep researchers, emotional first aid, right?
38:25 Mindy Pelz? Oh, I love that.
38:26 Speaker 01 So it's how we deal with our emotions, we process memories, we take the sting off difficult experiences and lay them down in a more, you know, a less triggering fashion, right? Which is why I think for people who are suffering with their mental health, I think alcohol can be really problematic because you lose REM sleep.
38:43 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
38:44 Speaker 01 The other thing alcohol does is it fragments our sleep. So often people don't even realise that they're getting up multiple times in the night. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. They think they've slept well and then they're thinking, well, why am I so tired today? So. I think, yes, a lot of alcoholic drinks have too many calories in, too much sugar in, which is not going to help you if you're trying to lose weight. But I also think that alcohol's impact on our sleep is highly problematic. And for some people, it's going to really get in the way of their weight loss. And so for that person who still wants to have a drink, what I would say to them is, look, I think it's better for you to try not to if you can, but if you really do want to have that, try and have as little as you can, right?
39:29 Speaker 01 Let's say you're used to having three glasses of wine.
39:31 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, start to taper down.
39:32 Speaker 01 Try and see if you have just one glass, but also have it earlier in the evening. So if you were to have a, let's say you finish work at five. And again, I need to be careful how I say this. I'm not recommending that people drink, right?
39:44 Mindy Pelz? I can feel the brain, people's brain going, oh, okay, wait, this is the out.
39:48 Speaker 01 Well, here, let me, let me put it this way. A 5pm glass of red wine is going to have less impact on your sleep than a 10.30pm glass of red wine that you have in front of the television.
40:00 Mindy Pelz? Exactly.
40:01 Speaker 01 Because you will have metabolized and processed some of that wine by the time you go to sleep. So if you are going to have it, earlier is probably better.
40:10 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
40:10 Speaker 01 As long as that earlier glass doesn't turn into the whole bottle.
40:13 Mindy Pelz? And then also to, to your point earlier, if you get poor sleep, now you're going to eat more calories the next day. So it sets them up for the vicious cycle that they, so they all, they're like puzzle pieces, all of these, everybody has to find their own puzzle coming together.
40:28 Speaker 01 And it gets into this vicious cycle not with just food, but you're more tied than that, say, so what do you do? You drink more caffeine.
40:32 Mindy Pelz? Right.
40:32 Speaker 01 Right? You have more caffeine and you have caffeine later on in the day because by the time it gets to three or 3.30pm, because you had a bad night's sleep, because you were drinking alcohol the night before.
40:43 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
40:44 Speaker 01 You need more sugar, you need more caffeine to get you going. So that then has an exome impact on your sleep on the subsequent night. And because you're wired when you come home from work because you've had all this caffeine, you may then feel the need to have some more alcohol to bring you down, caffeine to bring you up in the morning, alcohol to bring you down. And so for some people, alcohol is going to sabotage their efforts to lose weight. And you will have seen, like I have many patients who do everything else, but it won't change alcohol.
41:15 Mindy Pelz? I think, I think that's the most shocking thing to me in helping so many people lose weight is that they, I really truly believe there are people out there trying so hard. And they're not losing weight, but they're missing pieces like what we're discussing right now. And that's what I'm trying to free people because then we start getting, we think it's our fault and we, you know, think we're undisciplined, but these little pieces like the alcohol caffeine thing is really interesting because you're absolutely right. So you alcohol to wind down and you caffeine to wind up and they kind of are connected.
41:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, the key thing I want people who are struggling to lose weight to know is first of all, listen, I honestly don't think it's your fault.
41:58 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, I agree.
41:58 Speaker 01 Right. It is really, really tough in this food environment.
42:04 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
42:05 Speaker 01 To not put weight on.
42:06 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
42:07 Speaker 01 You're surrounded by food everywhere, not just, and it's not good quality food that you're surrounded by.
42:13 Mindy Pelz? No.
42:13 Speaker 01 It is food that in my book I call blissy foods, these foods that have been specifically engineered to raise dopamine. Right. They're specifically engineered where you cannot resist them. You know, there's a make of what we would call crisps or you guys would call potato chips in the UK. When the advert is once you pop, you can't stop. It's true.
42:33 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
42:34 Speaker 01 Once you pop, you can't stop because it's been engineered that way.
42:37 Mindy Pelz? Do you know that about, gosh, it was like 20 years ago, I saw an article in the LA Times. It was like a four page article about how the potato chip companies actually sit around, there's a, there's a conference room where they sit around and they go, okay, what makes the potato chip addictive? And they're like, it's, it's sweet and it's a little salty. It's light. Like they break it all down to make it so that you want to have more. And so they literally spray on top of it, a chemical that makes you want to have it more.
43:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think they even go further and they maybe try two or 300 flavors out. And they do scans and see, you know, which, which spikes these chemicals in your brain the most.
43:23 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
43:23 Speaker 01 Right. What's the bliss point? So it's not that you're weak, right? It's not that you have no willpower. These foods are incredibly difficult to resist.
43:34 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
43:34 Speaker 01 We know that when we take native communities or hunter gatherer tribes, or we take people and bring them into more urban environments. They're fine in their native environment. They all put on weight when they come into the modern food environment. So one of my top tits of people around that. Which again, recently I put it out on my Instagram and it seemed to trigger a few people, which I found, well, I can explain why I think it is. I say, don't exercise willpower in your house. So basically, if you don't want to eat it, don't bring it into your house.
44:07 Mindy Pelz? Oh, that's totally my go-to all the time.
44:10 Speaker 01 Because you're making it hard for yourself. Like, you have to exercise willpower as soon as you step out your front door. You want to fill up petrol or gas, you're standing to pay, you're surrounded by all the cookies and the sweets and the potato chips, right? Everywhere you go, you're trying to go to the coffee shop here in the UK, you're trying to buy a coffee, you're going to one of the chains and you'll be offered a nice pan of chocolat or a pastry, right? And if you haven't sat well, you're going to find it hard to resist. So you're gonna have to use willpower when you're out of your house. So I say, don't use it up at home. So for many years, I have a rule. If I don't want to eat it, I don't bring it in the house. And I was home alone with my kids this weekend, my wife was away. And I remember
44:51 Speaker 01 on Saturday evening, once I'd put the kids to bed, I was craving something sweet, right? I really wanted something. I thought, you know what? Kids are in bed, my wife's away. I feel like something sweet. I looked in my cupboard, there's nuts, there's olives, there's avocados. I'm like, there's nothing sweet here. And you know what? I didn't end up having anything sweet.
45:11 Mindy Pelz? Oh, my God, that's so me.
45:13 Speaker 01 Just because I know this stuff, just because I've written a load of books on this, it doesn't mean I'm any less human than anyone else. I'm as tempted as anyone else is. So I take precautions. And I've got to tell you, that's a tip I've been using with patients for over 10 years, and most people love it. Now, when I posted this on Instagram recently, some people were saying, this is the wrong advice, right? We need to be able to get to the point where we're so in tune with our bodies that we can have the cookies and the biscuits and the chips at home. And tap into ourselves and be intuitive and not eat them. And in my head, I'm like, you know what?
45:54 Speaker 01 Hey, I've got no problem. If you can get to that state, great. Knock yourself out, right? But I've got to tell you, I'm not at that state.
46:02 Mindy Pelz? Right.
46:02 Speaker 01 Most of my patients are not. So in the meantime, before you get to that enlightened state where you can do that.
46:08 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
46:09 Speaker 01 I'm like, a little helpful tip is just don't bring it into the house.
46:12 Mindy Pelz? I'm the same way. I can't, if it's in the house and it's eight o'clock at night, it starts calling my name. I sometimes can't resist it. So getting it out.
46:20 Speaker 01 You know, if I had ice cream, I would demolish the whole tub.
46:23 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, yeah.
46:23 Speaker 01 So I don't bring it in.
46:25 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
46:25 Speaker 01 So it's a very simple tip. The other tip around food I love to share with people, because I've seen it transformative for many patients, also myself, not so much for weight loss with myself, because I'm, I'm very lucky in the sense that weight hasn't been something I've struggled with in my life, although, although people would look at me and go, you're tall and lean. You know, if I'm not eating well for a while, I can put on a little bit of weight around my tummy. I can see it on my face and it doesn't feel good. This is a tip that for some people that's counterintuitive, but I think it really helps and it's eat your dinner for breakfast.
47:01 Mindy Pelz? Flip it.
47:02 Speaker 01 Totally flip it. And, and I can so remember this 44 year old chap, I think, who came in to see me. He wasn't like really overweight, but he was struggling a bit and he was carrying a bit of excess weight. He tried things to change it, said, hey, doc, I don't quite know what I'm doing. And I sort of went through his day. And he would start off his day with a sugary granola. Now, he thought it was healthy. It was a healthy cereal that had some sort of marketing messages on the outside. And I asked him to bring it in. I said, look, there's so much sugar in this, right? And what's happening when you have that first thing in the morning? I get that you're trying to have something healthy, that you've been told is healthy. The problem is, is that you're going to have a blood sugar spike after you eat this.
47:48 Speaker 01 And two to three hours later, your blood sugar is going to rapidly start to fall. And you may well, at that point, lose your focus, lose your energy and feel sometimes quite anxious. Because that's a, a stress sign to the body, blood sugar falling rapidly.
48:02 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
48:03 Speaker 01 And he said, Yeah, that's funny because mid morning, I do feel really hungry. I feel quite lightheaded. And I get a bit cranky until I've had some foods. And this chap was vegetarian. He wanted to stay vegetarian. So there are other things in his life that I looked at, but he would always make himself a really nice evening meal. And I remember like one thing he loved having in the evening was salmon and goat's cheese and roasted vegetables.
48:30 Mindy Pelz? That sounds amazing.
48:30 Speaker 01 And I said, okay, could you make extra in the evening, put some in the fridge and have that for your breakfast as well? And he's like, yeah, never even thought of that. I said, just try it for a week and see what happens. That one change honestly changed everything about this guy's life. The first time he did that, he had that before he went off to work in the morning. And he said, I didn't feel hungry till two P M. Normally at ten thirty, I'm hungry. Lunchtime, I can't wait to go and have something. My focus was the best it has ever been at work. I felt high levels of energy. And he naturally ate less. And I think people don't realise that their first meal is often sabotaging them.
49:14 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
49:15 Speaker 01 They're often having dessert for breakfast, you know, unfortunately, even a lot of these so-called healthy cereals are just desserts.
49:22 Mindy Pelz? Well, oatmeal, I'm shocked at how many people have oatmeal for breakfast. And I don't find, I can't see, maybe if you add some protein to oatmeal. But it's still a blood sugar spike.
49:32 Speaker 01 It is for most people. And look, some people will say that oatmeal really helps them in the morning and they don't feel hungry. And I've seen enough from the need to go, okay, I believe that for some people, it could be their microbiome, their heritage, whatever it might be, maybe with steel cut oats, maybe they're okay.
49:48 Mindy Pelz? Like an instant oatmeal. Yeah.
49:50 Speaker 01 I think more people than not are getting sugar spikes from these foods. And so simply flipping dinner for breakfast.
49:57 Mindy Pelz? I love that.
49:58 Speaker 01 I think it's huge for people. I certainly don't think in terms of more tips, I would say, try not to eat two to three hours before bed if you can.
50:05 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
50:06 Speaker 01 I know it's hard. Sometimes you might want to finish your work and come and. Relax when you come home. I do get that. I personally don't use a sleep tracker anymore. I did for a period of time and one of the key, I felt with the Oura ring that I learned all I needed to learn within a few weeks.
50:23 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, you saw your habits. Yeah.
50:25 Speaker 01 I saw it. I'd figure this out. I'd leave it for a few months, put it on again and go, okay, I get what this is teaching me.
50:30 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, yeah.
50:31 Speaker 01 And I guess everyone's different. We've all got to find what works for us. But for me, one of the key learnings was if I eat within two or even three hours of bed, I don't have as good a night's sleep.
50:42 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
50:43 Speaker 01 And then if we think about what we said before, where food, digesting food is very heavy on the body.
50:49 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
50:49 Speaker 01 Right? It's a very labor intensive process.
50:53 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
50:53 Speaker 01 It kind of makes sense. If you give yourself two, three hours where you're awake, where your body's done a lot of the heavy lifting, you're going to have, you know, a more relaxing sleep. So I think that can be really beneficial.
51:03 Mindy Pelz? Yeah. And, and I, I absolutely agree. I try to eat much earlier. In fact, I've been, and you and I talked about this, I've been really trying to eat my biggest meal in either like around noon and then eat lighter as the day goes. Like I'll have like a light meal before, you know, as the sun is setting because it's been summer. So I think the timing of, of those meals is really important.
51:23 Speaker 01 I think that's better because there's a lot of research now. There was a Spanish study that I think maybe three years ago came out that they basically split people into two groups and they had the same foods, the same number of calories. But one group had the majority of those calories in the first half of the day. So I think they finished at three P M. With the main bulk of their calories, so only a very, very light dinner. And the other group had it flipped where they had the most of their calories in the second half of the day. And there was a significant difference in weight loss. The people basically who front loaded their foods.
51:59 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
52:00 Speaker 01 Did much, much better. The ones with a lighter dinner, there was more fat loss, more weight loss, better blood sugar control. But again, I want to highlight something that I said earlier, Mindy, which is we can see these studies and think that's fact and that applies to me.
52:16 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, well, well.
52:17 Speaker 01 And it isn't. It's like that works for that group of people.
52:20 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
52:21 Speaker 01 You may go. You know, we know that connection is important for our health. We know, as you've mentioned, if we were eating in a relaxed state around loved ones, we're more present, we're more mindful, it's gonna have, you know, we're gonna process and digest that food better. Maybe it's gonna help us put on less weight.
52:38 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
52:39 Speaker 01 Well, if you're in a family where you all like to sit around and have a meal together in the evening, because you're all out, you know, your kids are at school, they're at college, and your partner's out of work, you're out of work. Okay, well, maybe that approach is not going to be the right approach for you.
52:55 Mindy Pelz? Right.
52:55 Speaker 01 Maybe you can move some of these other levers.
52:57 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, there's a lot of levers to move.
52:59 Speaker 01 There's a lot of levers, and you don't actually, one thing I've learned many is you don't have to actually pull on every lever.
53:05 Mindy Pelz? No.
53:05 Speaker 01 You just need to pull on enough, and that starts to shift the balance for you.
53:10 Mindy Pelz? Yeah. My, one of my favorite quotes is, you don't need motivation, you need momentum.
53:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:15 Mindy Pelz? And that's exactly what we're talking about, is just what's gonna get you momentum, so that you start to increase your motivation to do more and more good health habits.
53:24 Speaker 01 And that's why I personally believe that starting small.
53:27 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, I agree.
53:28 Speaker 01 Is better for most people. Like, in my experience, I found that some people can overnight transform their entire life. But generally speaking, from what I've seen, it happens when you've had a significant life stressor, bereavement, you've lost your job, you've just split up with a long-term partner. Yeah, you know what, in those cases, I have seen overnight, you can change everything.
53:55 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
53:56 Speaker 01 But if you haven't had that, in my experience, most people are better off starting small, because otherwise what happens, you end up in the classic New Year scenario, which we see every January. People wake up on New Year's Day.
54:07 Mindy Pelz? Oh, yeah.
54:07 Speaker 01 And they think, right, this year is gonna be different from.
54:10 Mindy Pelz? This is the year.
54:10 Speaker 01 Every year. You know, somehow, miraculously, I'm gonna be different this year.
54:15 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
54:15 Speaker 01 I'm gonna, I'm gonna use even more motivation and willpower this year. I'm gonna go spending four times a week for two weeks, all year. And they do it for two weeks, and they're feeling good, and then what happens? Life gets in the way.
54:26 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
54:27 Speaker 01 Right? Work is busy, you had a bad day at work, you come back and you think, I can't be bothered going to the gym. Right? So you have this really yo-yo type approach to health, whereas if you start small, it becomes sustainable, and it leads to what I call the ripple effect. So, one thing I've spoken about for years, and probably one of my cornerstone habits.
54:48 Speaker 01 That I've been doing for maybe four years now is I have a five minute strength workout every single morning.
54:55 Mindy Pelz? Ooh, I love that.
54:57 Speaker 01 Right.
54:57 Mindy Pelz? What does that look like?
54:57 Speaker 01 What it looks like, so as part of my morning routine, one of the things I do is have a workout. So I come down in the morning in my pajamas, right? I live in a house, so I come downstairs. Now, for me personally, the first thing I do is I meditate for 10 minutes. Cause that's, cause I've learned that I'm a better human being when I do that.
55:12 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, me too.
55:13 Speaker 01 But let's park that to the side for a minute. This strength workout, what happens? Well, one of the things I do is make myself coffee. So in my pajamas and you've, you know, you've been in my house, you've seen how particular I am. I weigh out coffee.
55:26 Mindy Pelz? I've had your coffee, you make your coffee.
55:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I, and I time it for five minutes. Cause that's how long I like it to brew. In those five minutes, I don't go on Instagram, I don't go on my email, I don't look at the news. I have a workout in my pajamas. It used to be body weight, now I have a kettlebell and a dumbbell. You've seen them outside, kicking around. Why? Because it means instead of me having to find a dedicated one hour to go and visit a gym, nothing against that, if you like doing that and you've got time for that. But it basically means that every morning without fail, I have a five minute strength workout and I rarely miss a day in four years.
56:07 Mindy Pelz? Oh my God, that's brilliant.
56:08 Speaker 01 Why have I rarely missed a day? It's not because I've got more motivation than anyone else. It's because there's two big rules of behaviour change that I think people don't follow, which is what trips them up. Rule number one, you've got to make it easy.
56:22 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
56:22 Speaker 01 Right, why do you need to make it easy? You need to make it easy because willpower never lasts.
56:26 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
56:27 Speaker 01 Right? January the first, willpower's through the roof. So we think, I'm going to go spinning one hour, four times a week, right? Great, you do that when your willpower's high, but when your willpower falls, as it always does, right? That's the key point. As it always does, you will never do something if it's hard. So rule number one, make it easy. It's a five minute workout. It's not half an hour.
56:49 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
56:49 Speaker 01 It's not an hour, it's five minutes, which means I can rarely say I don't have time for five minutes. Rule number two is where are you going to put that behaviour? Well, from the research, we know the very best place to put any new behaviour, if you want to turn it into a long-term habit, is to stick it onto an existing habit. So what's an existing habit? It's a behaviour you're doing without thinking about it. I don't really need any motivation to make my morning coffee.
57:16 Mindy Pelz? No, you don't.
57:17 Speaker 01 Right? It's happening. So if I stick on the behavior onto my coffee habit, the workout happens every day because I drink coffee every day. And so I've learned, and this is what I always try and teach patients or on my podcast or on my YouTube channel. I try and show people that find your equivalent of that. Right? Why do I do it in my pajamas? Well, I've made it so easy. I don't have to put my workout gear on. You don't have to get changed to have a workout.
57:44 Mindy Pelz? Somebody could get down and do pushups. They could do tricep dips, squats. Like you don't even have to have kettlebells or.
57:51 Speaker 01 You don't have to have anything. And actually, there's another point here, which I think is really relevant for people, which is our environment influences our behavior so much more than we think. So we can, we can look at that in a macro way and look at society and go, okay, the food environment for many of us is toxic now. We're surrounded by high energy, calorie dense foods that are very hard to resist. That's why as a population, we're really struggling to lose weight, or that's one of the reasons, right? So the environment is influencing our behavior. But let's look at that on a individual level inside our own houses. I have a dumbbell and a kettlebell in my kitchen. So what does that mean? In the morning, when I go into my kitchen,
58:34 Speaker 01 I'm being visually triggered and reminded that I could pick that thing up. And I'll be honest, a few years ago, I was chatting to my wife and she said, hey, baby, you're gonna keep this stuff in the kitchen. And I remember saying, hey, listen, the problem is if I put that in the garage or I put it in the cupboard, I'm probably never gonna pick it up.
58:52 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
58:52 Speaker 01 Right? But by having it there every day, not only do I have this sort of five minute thing that I've made a habit, I'm being visually triggered to my environment is.
59:05 Speaker 01 Encouraging me to pick that thing up.
59:07 Mindy Pelz? Yes. So it's the same, we're back at this environment because this is sort of a through line that I'm really seeing right now with people and their health is that they're trying to change their health in the wrong environment.
59:20 Speaker 01 Exactly.
59:21 Mindy Pelz? And so why don't we start with the environment first? Like, like what you said, like I'm saying, where are you eating? Let's, let's change that environment. And what I just heard and what you're saying is when I work out, how do I change the environment where I work out in? How do I make it so ridiculously easy for me?
59:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:36 Mindy Pelz? And I, I think this is like a conversations is not being had.
59:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. And what that small habit does is it builds self-esteem and confidence.
59:50 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
59:50 Speaker 01 Right? If you wanna go on this weight loss journey in a world that's encouraging you to put on weight and be fat, let's be honest, right?
59:59 Speaker 01 You need to build it your self-esteem because it's gonna be hard.
1:00:03 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:00:04 Speaker 01 And I think a lot of the time, we feel so negative about ourselves. We feel that we were weak. Oh, I crumbled. I had the ice cream. I'm such a failure. And then the next day, we kind of almost drown or eat away our emotions and our sorrows because we feel so bad, which
1:00:18 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:00:18 Speaker 01 becomes problematic. When you make one small promise to yourself every day and you keep it, so for me, it's my five minute workout.
1:00:27 Mindy Pelz? I love that.
1:00:27 Speaker 01 I keep that promise to myself. I send my body and my mind, one of the most powerful signals out there, which is I can rely on myself.
1:00:37 Mindy Pelz? Oh, I love that.
1:00:38 Speaker 01 I don't say stuff and I don't keep my word. If you say, I'm gonna transform my sleep environment, I'm gonna go to the gym four times a week, I'm gonna eat three home cooked meals a day. You know what? Good luck. If you can do that, amazing.
1:00:49 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:00:50 Speaker 01 But if you fail, which most of us do, you're actually then, in some ways, you're sending a signal to your body that I can't stick to anything.
1:01:00 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:01:01 Speaker 01 And that's why I love starting small. So by the, by virtue of the fact that I haven't missed a day, and even on the busiest day, let's say I skip the meditation, I'll still do my five minute workout. So I send myself, I give myself the most powerful form of evidence that exists, which is real life lived experience.
1:01:20 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:01:20 Speaker 01 That I can depend on myself. And I think anyone who's trying to lose weight, find one keystone habit, make it small, stick it onto an existing behavior.
1:01:32 Speaker 01 An existing habit, sorry, and make yourself a promise, say, I'm gonna do this every day.
1:01:36 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, you know, it's so interesting because I get a lot of people who's who will say to me, like out in public or on DMs on socials and they'll they'll say, oh, my God, you changed my life. Yeah, I lost all this weight because of you. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't get any of that credit. Only you could stop you from putting food in your mouth. And in that moment, you need to look yourself in the mirror and thank you to your point. Because if you stop putting food in your mouth and you got a result, or you decided to do the five minute workout and and you're starting to see a change, you literally have to look at yourself in the mirror and go, okay, I can only thank me. And then that's the beginning of taking this health power back.
1:02:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I just want to also address, because I think that's a really, really great point. Because people are doing it, right? They're maybe using your podcast or my podcast to get information, but they're the ones who have to change.
1:02:33 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:02:33 Speaker 01 Right, they're doing it. And if anyone's thinking, well, how much is a five minute workout really gonna do? Right, let's address that head on. It's not so much about the calories burnt, right? It's not so much about what that's gonna do for your physique, although these things are very relevant.
1:02:54 Speaker 01 It's something, in my view, that's much more powerful than that. It's that confidence we have in ourselves, it's that trust we have in ourselves.
1:03:04 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
1:03:04 Speaker 01 Most people who are struggling with their health, whether it be weight loss or anything else, in my experience, they've lost confidence.
1:03:10 Mindy Pelz? Yes, they, yes.
1:03:11 Speaker 01 They beat up themselves, they talk negatively about themselves. And that's why, yeah, you can buy any diet book you want, right? And if you stick to it for three weeks, you're probably gonna lose weight, probably. But most people are not looking for dropping a dress size in two weeks. Most people are looking for sustainable change, where they start to lose the excess weight for good, when they've got more energy, more vitality, where this becomes sustainable and a new lifestyle.
1:03:40 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:03:41 Speaker 01 And and I very much relate that five minute kitchen workout to tooth brushing for people.
1:03:46 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, it's, that's what it actually reminded me of.
1:03:48 Speaker 01 It's the same thing.
1:03:49 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, yeah.
1:03:49 Speaker 01 Nobody says this, Mindy, no one says, I don't think at least.
1:03:55 Speaker 01 My dental hygiene is important, right? But you know, Monday was, it was a busy day at work, you know, I'm gonna skip it today. Oh, Tuesday, I don't have time. You know what? I'm gonna miss it in the week, but on Sunday, I'm going in for a deep one hour clean. No one says that, that we intuitively understand that a little bit every day means you look after your teeth for life. And I'm not saying that five minute kitchen workout is in place of a longer workout twice a week, or going to the gym, or going on your exercise bike, or whatever it might be. For me, it's the same as tooth brushing. I brush my teeth every day. I do a five minute strength workout every day. Now, if on one day I've got more time, and I can go for a 90 minute walk, or a run, or the gym, great.
1:04:40 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:04:41 Speaker 01 But it's not instead of that.
1:04:42 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:04:43 Speaker 01 And that's why I do it every day.
1:04:44 Mindy Pelz? I actually see a next book for you. I think it should be the five minute kitchen workout.
1:04:50 Speaker 01 Five minute kitchen workout, there you go.
1:04:52 Mindy Pelz? I think there's a lot to say there. Okay, total, total other topic on weight loss that's pretty popular right now. And I'd be curious, your medical opinion on this is all of the weight loss drugs that everybody is tapping into. Ozempic, a few of the other ones, I mean, people are getting incredible results. What are your thoughts on that?
1:05:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, so listen, first thing I want to acknowledge is I don't feel that I'm an expert in the weight loss drugs, okay, so I want to acknowledge that first of all. From what I've seen, and from what I've heard, some of the weight loss that's coming from these weight loss drugs, quite a large proportion is coming from muscle.
1:05:30 Mindy Pelz? I've heard that too.
1:05:31 Speaker 01 Right?
1:05:32 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:05:33 Speaker 01 Instead of fat. And when we talk about weight loss, I think we need to be really clear, most people are looking to lose fat. Right? It's not just the weight on the scale. People are ideally trying to lose visceral fat, the dangerous harmful type of fat that surrounds our organs. And they're trying to put on muscle.
1:05:52 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:05:52 Speaker 01 What we don't really want is a situation where we're losing weight on the scales, but we're losing a lot of lean muscle. Because lean muscle is so important for insulin, for glucose disposal, for our aging. As you've spoken about on my podcast, very important for estrogen.
1:06:10 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:06:11 Speaker 01 Right? So, I always want to say, listen.
1:06:17 Speaker 01 My bias, and I think we all have biases that sometimes we don't acknowledge. My bias is that I would prefer it if we could help people lose weight without the need for pharmaceutical medications. That's the truth. That's my bias.
1:06:30 Mindy Pelz? Oh, agreed, yeah.
1:06:30 Speaker 01 And having, I would say, successfully been doing this for over two decades, I genuinely feel that we can help most people do that. I acknowledge that it can be difficult, more difficult for some than others, but I think we have all kinds of tools like CGMs now, which you wear sometimes, I wear once every three months or so for two weeks. It can be incredibly empowering.
1:06:54 Mindy Pelz? I actually think the CGM, we could totally change the metabolic health of the world.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 So, I completely agree. I will go this far. I don't think in two decades of practice, I have seen any tool be as transformative for helping an individual change their behaviour as a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor. Because what that does, and I accept that they can be overused, and I accept that for some people with eating disorders, they can perhaps create an unhealthy relationship with food, but that doesn't mean that no one can benefit from them.
1:07:29 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:07:29 Speaker 01 Again, these discussions online become very black or white, they're either all good or they're all bad. Well, no, for some people, they're probably not the best tool.
1:07:36 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:07:37 Speaker 01 But for some people, if you have type 2 diabetes, or metabolic syndrome, or you struggle with your weight, understanding for you which foods really spike your blood sugar can be absolutely transformative.
1:07:50 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, change your life.
1:07:51 Speaker 01 Again, just to acknowledge some of the other critiques against them, you know, could you not pay attention to anything else and just eat bacon all day, every day, and have a flat blood sugar? Yeah, you could do that. Would that be helpful? Probably not.
1:08:06 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:08:07 Speaker 01 Right? So, it's the way we use these tools that determine whether they're going to be effective or not.
1:08:12 Mindy Pelz? So well said. Yeah, and actually, that brings up an interesting point, because I've done a lot of research on the carnivore diet versus vegan, you know, and we have a lot of plant-based versus animal-based sort of discussions, and we have a fasting group called the Resetter Collaborative on Facebook, and everybody's always talking about how do you best handle going back into food, and these two things come up. So but one issue that I feel like isn't being addressed in weight loss is the microbiome.
1:08:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:41 Mindy Pelz? And what the impact of the microbiome is on your ability to lose weight. So you most likely know the studies that have shown one round of antibiotics actually causes you to start to gain more weight because it has decimated the good and the bad bacteria. So would you say that it is important to make sure that you're feeding your microbiome to be able to support a weight loss journey?
1:09:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, 100%. There's so much supporting evidence here on the relationship between our microbiome and our weight, not only in the ability in which we process the nutrients that come in, how much fat we're going to absorb. There's even some studies which have shown that an FMT, a fecal microbiota transplantation.
1:09:25 Mindy Pelz? It's impressive.
1:09:26 Speaker 01 If you are, again, I don't know how much this has been replicated, but there are certainly individual cases where someone who is severely overweight into their gut is implanted the feces, basically, the microbiome from a thin person.
1:09:45 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
1:09:45 Speaker 01 And that can change your weight.
1:09:46 Mindy Pelz? And they, yeah.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 There's so much there that we're learning, right? Do we know enough for every single person? Probably not, but do we know enough to go, it's worth supporting the microbiome in all of our patients? Yes, it is.
1:09:58 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:09:59 Speaker 01 But again, what does supporting the microbiome be?
1:10:01 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, what's your strategy for that?
1:10:03 Speaker 01 So I've evolved my view on this over the last few years because one thing, like there's a popular thing now to, you know, try and have 30 different plant foods a week.
1:10:16 Speaker 01 Now, it's not that I'm against that. I think if you can do that, yeah, you're going to get all kinds of polyphenols, all kinds of prebiotic foods that feed lots of different species of bacteria.
1:10:27 Speaker 01 The problem is, a lot of people struggle with their guts. A lot of people have got IBS, they've got bloating. And as they start to ramp up their fibre intake, they feel uncomfortable. They're struggling to go to the toilets. Now, some people will say they just need to build up slowly. And I agree, that can be a helpful strategy. But for some people, I've tried it, I've tried addressing their stress, I've helped them build up slowly. They don't seem to tolerate that level of fibre. And this is where I think the nuance gets lost in conversation. For some people, increasing the amount of fibre to those high levels is life changing. Helps them lose weight, helps them be full more, helps increase the health of their gut microbiome.
1:11:08 Speaker 01 The truth is though, I've got some friends, I've got some patients who are thriving on a more carnivorous style of diet.
1:11:16 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:11:17 Speaker 01 And we've got to be able to sit with that and go, what's going on here? Because that is happening.
1:11:22 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:11:23 Speaker 01 And so, how do I put all that together?
1:11:25 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, I was just gonna say.
1:11:26 Speaker 01 Well, I say, you've got to be doing something for your microbiome. So doing something with your microbiome means, first of all, stopping putting in things that are decimating it.
1:11:34 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:11:34 Speaker 01 Right? And that could be a lot of the ultra-processed foods, a lot of the emulsifiers, a lot of the artificial ingredients that we know are affecting our microbiome. You mentioned that study on antibiotics. I think one thing we're learning now with antibiotics is that we're all, we have different levels of resilience. Some people can have one course of broad-spectrum antibiotics and for two years, their microbiome hasn't recovered to the previous pre-antibiotic state. Whereas some are seemingly recovering within two weeks without actually doing anything. So again, it's all highly individual.
1:12:10 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:12:10 Speaker 01 But I think, yes, increase the amount of colourful vegetables in your diet to get that diversity if you can.
1:12:16 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:12:17 Speaker 01 Okay? But if you can't, there are other options, right? You could just go for pre-biotic foods. And there was a study that came out about three months ago, I think it's from Israel, showing that the top pre-biotic foods that have the most pre-biotic fibre for our gut bugs, I think were leeks. Onions and Jerusalem artichokes, I think.
1:12:37 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, Jerusalem artichokes are big.
1:12:38 Speaker 01 There's a fourth and fifth one, I can't quite remember. But these are very, these are very cheap.
1:12:42 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:12:43 Speaker 01 Very accessible foods, right? So it's not that this is, you know, beyond the scope of most people. But if you can't do that, because some of these prebiotic fibers give people bloating.
1:12:52 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:12:52 Speaker 01 Okay, what else can you do? Well, you could have live yogurts, which have got probiotic bacteria within them.
1:12:58 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
1:12:59 Speaker 01 That may be an option. You could have kefir, right? You can even go to fermented foods like sauerkraut.
1:13:05 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:13:05 Speaker 01 Right? What I try to do with patients, and again, this is how it's evolved over the years, is we need to be doing something proactive for your gut's health.
1:13:14 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:13:15 Speaker 01 But what is that thing that's going to work for you? Like, some of my patients who are on a more carnivorous style of eating over the last years, I found that them actually having sauerkraut, two spoons of that a day, they can tolerate fine. So they're doing something for their microbiome.
1:13:32 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, okay, so this is really interesting because I absolutely agree with you as far as like people who can't have fiber. And, you know, a lot of people have SIBO, a lot of which is.
1:13:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you could be treating that and then they can tolerate it.
1:13:45 Mindy Pelz? That's right. So I came up with something called carnivore fasting, where you fast 17 hours, changing your gut microbiome, and then you eat, in your eating window, you only eat meat. And this is obviously for animal-based eaters. And you do that for three days in a row. So what you're doing is you're killing all the bad bacteria. You're not feeding any of the stuff that triggers SIBO. What we do know about a meat-only diet is that it can actually upregulate T-regulatory cells.
1:14:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:14 Mindy Pelz? So it calms that, that gut. So you do it for like three days and then go back to more of a fiber diet and see how it works. Now, sauerkraut, what's so interesting there is that the fermentation process brings those enzymes in that help break it all down, so SIBO's not as actively triggered.
1:14:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:32 Mindy Pelz? Would you agree with that?
1:14:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love that. I, I think that's a great approach. So if I, if I take a step back.
1:14:41 Speaker 01 What is that saying? That's currently saying, okay, you might have an individual or a patient who's struggling, right?
1:14:50 Speaker 01 They may hear on a podcast or read in a book that I need to increase the amount of fibre in my diet for my gut bugs. They then go and try that. They feel awful and then they feel really demoralised and deflated.
1:15:02 Mindy Pelz? Exactly.
1:15:02 Speaker 01 That I can't do it. What's happening to my gut health?
1:15:05 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
1:15:05 Speaker 01 So there's a number of ways to tackle that. And this is where it's hard on a podcast to get all the nuances across. With an individual in my clinic, these are the kind of nuanced approaches I would take.
1:15:15 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:15:16 Speaker 01 Could be, oh, you've got SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Let's treat the SIBO, right? Maybe with changes to your diet, maybe sometimes with an antibiotic, although I prefer not to where possible, but I have done in the past sometimes.
1:15:28 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, it can be helpful.
1:15:29 Speaker 01 With a really difficult case of SIBO. Then, once you've corrected the underlying problem, then yeah, you might be able to bring in more vegetables, more prebiotic fibres.
1:15:39 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:15:40 Speaker 01 But not always, right? In my experience, not always. And I think we have to acknowledge that some of us, because of the way we've been living for so long, because of the pollutants in the atmosphere, in our food environment, because of the chronic stress, the chronic sleep deprivation. Actually, sometimes our bodies aren't in a great state of health.
1:16:00 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:16:00 Speaker 01 And we have to do things that in the short term help us. So I do believe it would be better for most people to be able to tolerate more fibre in their diet. But sometimes it's going to be a period of years before they can do that.
1:16:12 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:16:13 Speaker 01 And so I think your approach that you outlined is a really great one because I can see, you know, people with SIBO who go and who eat meat and who go on just a meat only diet. They love it because their symptoms aren't there. They're not eating any of the foods that flare up in the SIBO.
1:16:30 Mindy Pelz? Incredible.
1:16:30 Speaker 01 And therefore they want to stay on it forever.
1:16:32 Mindy Pelz? Absolutely.
1:16:33 Speaker 01 And again, I get that. And I think this is one of the things with the carnivore movements. Again, I understand that some people get a full resolution if they're also mean symptoms. So why on earth would they want to change things?
1:16:46 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:16:47 Speaker 01 I I get that. I totally, you know, I've seen enough patients in pain who've struggled for years. If you find something that works, you're gonna be like, hey, you guys talk about whatever you want.
1:16:57 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:16:57 Speaker 01 But I've been in pain, I've had bloating, I've had joint pain for 10 years. If I only eat meat, I've got no symptoms.
1:17:04 Mindy Pelz? Right.
1:17:05 Speaker 01 So I get that. But I do think that many people on a carnivorous diet would probably benefit over a period of time as their body settles, if we can help them reduce stress, if we can help them repopulate their gut bugs, you know, and and improve the health of their gut microbiome. Ideally, I think it would be good if they can tolerate more things.
1:17:26 Mindy Pelz? It's back to the rhythm, right? It's like there's no one diet for, even for each individual. There's like, do this for a little while, then back away and then do this. It's kind of like what we talked about on your podcast. Like, we should be maybe looking at seasonal eating and women should be looking at eating according to their cycle. Like, there has, we have to bring rhythm back.
1:17:44 Speaker 01 Yeah. And and also, Mindy, I want people to pay attention, right? Pay attention to how you feel when you consume certain foods.
1:17:54 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:17:54 Speaker 01 Right? That three F freedom exercise about cravings was about paying attention.
1:17:59 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:18:00 Speaker 01 Whenever you're trying a new diet, whether it's something you've heard, you say, Mindy, or me say, or someone else, or you've read about, try it, but ask yourself, how is this working for me? How do I feel? How does my stomach feel? What are my bowels like? What is my sleep like? Because people often miss that step. They outsource everything onto the experts and they forget their own inner expertise.
1:18:24 Mindy Pelz? So true.
1:18:24 Speaker 01 And I want people to understand that the conversation around plant-based versus animal, in my view, it's the wrong debate to be having.
1:18:33 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
1:18:33 Speaker 01 Right? I get there's an ethical issue. I'm not talking about that. I'm purely talking through the lens of health of the environment. I think it's the wrong conversation. I think it's the wrong question. The question I think we should be asking ourselves for whatever we want to do with our health, whether it's weight loss or anything else is, what's the approach that's working for me? How do I feel want to eat this way versus how do I feel want to eat that way? And you will build up this kind of inner knowledge and wisdom that you can't get from any other experts.
1:19:05 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:19:06 Speaker 01 And I say, just to finish off there, two very simple questions I like my patients to ask themselves each night are these. What went well today?
1:19:16 Speaker 01 And what can I do differently tomorrow?
1:19:17 Mindy Pelz? I love that.
1:19:18 Speaker 01 And Mindy, what I love about those two questions is that they help us grow on a daily basis in a very compassionate way. We're not beating ourselves up. We're being very kind to ourselves. Okay, what went well today? Oh, you know what? Actually, I thought today was pretty bad. I skipped lunch. It was stressy at work, but despite all that, I still took half an hour to cook me and my family at home, cook me and when I came home from work. Okay, that you can write it in a journal if you want. That's what went well today. Number two, what can I do differently tomorrow? Well, the reason I was so stressed today and I skipped lunch is because I stayed up late watching Netflix last night. So I went to bed at midnight. So I didn't sleep well. I was exhausted today. I was craving caffeine and sugar and I ate more.
1:20:02 Speaker 01 Tonight, you know what? I can learn from that and go to bed a bit earlier. And if you ask yourself those two questions, day after day, week after week, month after month, you will become a black belt in your own life. You will understand the things that work for you and the things that don't work for you. And then you're empowered to make the changes that are going to work best.
1:20:25 Mindy Pelz? And then, and then nobody ever takes your power away.
1:20:27 Speaker 01 No one takes your power away.
1:20:28 Mindy Pelz? Because you created it. I, I think that's.
1:20:30 Speaker 01 And I tell you, that exercise will take people under five minutes to do. You can probably do it in under two minutes. You've just got to do it.
1:20:37 Mindy Pelz? I've started training my brain. I learned this from Bruce Lipton. I started training my brain as I go to bed to say, what amazing things happened to me today? And what amazing things do I get to do tomorrow? Because what I was doing before is I was like, okay, oh God, today, today was just a monster of a day. And oh my God, tomorrow is going to be a monster of a day. And I was finding myself going to sleep in this negative state. So I think you could take that, marry that with what you just said, which is, okay, what, what could I improve? You could start there. And what am I going to do different tomorrow? And then end before you go to bed with like, what, what wonderful things are going on in my life today, tomorrow, and really train your brain. Because as you go into that sleepy state, that's what's going
1:21:21 Mindy Pelz? to stick in your mind.
1:21:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, for sure.
1:21:24 Mindy Pelz? So anyways, this has been amazing. And I'll tell you what I'm really trying to do for people is create a toolbox of all the things we can do to help people lose weight. Because how we started this off, I think is really important, which is it's not for a lack of trying.
1:21:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:21:42 Mindy Pelz? That people aren't losing weight. And the modern world has us gaining weight, like you said, so easily. So I hope that this one, and then I did a solo episode a while back on all the little tricks you can do to unstick your weight. I'm hoping that this episode and that episode will be a really helpful pair.
1:21:58 Speaker 01 I really hope so, Mindy. And just one final thing I'd love to say to your audience is if you're getting overwhelmed, if you're hearing loads and loads of tips and you don't know where to start, pick one thing.
1:22:13 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, just go forward.
1:22:15 Speaker 01 Pick one thing.
1:22:16 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
1:22:17 Speaker 01 And say to yourself, I'm gonna do this thing for the next seven days.
1:22:19 Mindy Pelz? Yep.
1:22:20 Speaker 01 And don't worry about everything else. Just focus on that thing. It could be dinner for breakfast. It could be that three F freedom exercise in the sofa when you have cravings. It could be you're gonna ask yourself those two questions every night. Don't do them all. Because if you try and do them all, you'll do them all for a few days. And then when life's busy, you'll do none of them.
1:22:38 Mindy Pelz? That's right.
1:22:39 Speaker 01 Pick one thing, make a promise to yourself, and keep it.
1:22:42 Mindy Pelz? Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I love that. Okay, I do have to finish off on this. I asked two questions of all my guests that I, and it's, it's really a personal thing that I love, and I'm learning a lot from it. The first one is, you kind of alluded to it, but what, what's your self-care practice, your daily self-care practice, if you have one? And then the second one is, what superpower do you think you bring to the world?
1:23:05 Speaker 01 Wow. I think the first one's easier than the second one for me. Okay, so let's start with number one. My most important self-care practice is my morning routine.
1:23:15 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, me too.
1:23:16 Speaker 01 And a few years ago, it used to only last five or 10 minutes, but these days it lasts maybe thirty or forty minutes. And I say that because I get that some people feel too busy for a morning routine. I also used to feel too busy.
1:23:30 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, me too.
1:23:31 Speaker 01 But by observing and paying attention to who am I when I do my morning routine and who am I when I don't, I've learnt that I'm a better human being when I do my morning routine. I'm a better husband, I'm a better father, and I'm a better doctor. So what does that look like? Well, there's three components. It's what I call the three apps mindfulness, movement, and mindset. So I get up early, I get up before my wife and kids, and that's done intentionally because I like time to myself. And the first M is a mindfulness practice. So at the moment, that's ten minutes of meditation. The second thing I do is some movement. That's the second M. That's my five-minute kitchen workout, my five-minute strength workout while my coffee
1:24:15 Speaker 01 is brewing. Then the third M, which is the final piece of my morning routine, is mindset. So with my freshly brewed cup of coffee now that I've made, the way I like it, I'll either write in a journal, I'll do some affirmations, or I've got a few books in my kitchen that are uplifting, right? And I'll just pick up one of the books that takes my fancy, and I'll read a few pages. So I start off the day putting myself in a positive mindset. Now, at the moment, it takes me thirty or forty minutes. I can do it in fifteen or twenty minutes if I'm in a rush. But that's my self-care practice, and that's the thing I rarely miss these days.
1:24:55 Mindy Pelz? Yeah. That's actually a lot like my self-care practice. And if I don't do it, I'm a different human.
1:25:01 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I've just learned that means I need to prioritise my bedtime so that I can get up early and do it. I'm not perfect. I've made mistakes in the past. I'm at this stage in my life now at forty-six, where I've learnt that that's how I get to operate the way I want to operate in the world. So that's the answer to your first question. I can't stall on the second one for much longer. Okay, so.
1:25:24 Mindy Pelz? I can help you along if you want.
1:25:26 Speaker 01 What's your superpower that you bring to the world? Is that the question?
1:25:31 Speaker 01 I don't know if I necessarily
1:25:35 Speaker 01 call it my superpower. Maybe that's my own internal issues where I can't say that about myself.
1:25:44 Speaker 01 But I think I'm a compassionate person.
1:25:46 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, I was just, it's funny. I was sitting here thinking kindness has to be in there.
1:25:50 Speaker 01 You know, I, I, I genuinely believe that compassion is one of my main values. It's the thing that I always try and bring to every interaction I have, whether it's with my team, with my patients, with my wife, with my children, with, you know, the, the barista in the coffee shop. Like, I think if you speak to most people who know me or interact with me, they'll say, he always treats us well. He always treats us with kindness.
1:26:23 Mindy Pelz? Agreed.
1:26:24 Speaker 01 So I would say that's my superpower. And it also reminds me of what I consider to be the most important thing that I teach my own kids, which is, of course, I'm not saying your grades are not important at school, guys, but what's more important to me is how you treat people.
1:26:39 Mindy Pelz? Yes.
1:26:40 Speaker 01 Right? I want you to be treating every single person you interact with with respect.
1:26:46 Mindy Pelz? Yeah.
1:26:46 Speaker 01 Doesn't matter who they are, what they can do for you, or what they can't do for you. You treat people with compassion. So I would probably say the superpower I would like to think I have, and hopefully the superpower that I can pass on to my children is that compassion.
1:27:03 Mindy Pelz? Hmm. I love that. And I, I will reflect back to you for sure after spending the day with you. You can feel your compassion. And I, it's interesting because my husband and I had the same exact uh, value system for our children. We, we said to each other when, when our daughter was born, our first, our first child, if we do nothing else, we want to raise compassionate children and humans that can, can be spread love and kindness on this planet. If nothing else, that was our number one goal.
1:27:33 Speaker 01 Love it.
1:27:33 Mindy Pelz? So, Rangan, uh, adore you. So thank you so much for being here, or for letting me be here and just for talking to me all day long. This is incredible.
1:27:43 Speaker 01 No, I'd love it, Manu. You're doing great work. Keep it up.
1:27:45 Mindy Pelz? Yeah, same as you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.
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